Indus Valley Trade with Ancient Egypt

25 million lol??? You do realise Pakistans population was 27 million total at that time??

Yep. That's 25 million total, not just those who went to Pakistan, but all those who crossed the border either (so, if it were equal movement in both directions, 12.5 in, 12.5 out). That's a middle of the road estimate ... even the low estimates are still around 12 million.

Bin Qasim conquered the area in the 700s and converted many of the inhabitants to Islam. The Mughal Empire began in the 16th century, and yes, it did carry over heritage from previous empires - previous Islamic empires, that is. Islam, like Christianity, involves rejecting one's pre-Abrahamic culture. Not just the Pakistanis went through this with Islam, but even the Arabs did: they utterly rejected and wiped out their own history before Islam and the Minean, Sabaean, Himyarite etc civilizations that came before are forgotten: most accounts of Arab history begin with Mohammed and Islam. This is how Abrahamic religion operates, it obliterates cultural heritage and erases all that came before.

Likewise, inhabitants of the Indic regions did not even realize there was an Indus civilization under their feet after a millenium and a half of Abrahamic Islam, until Alexander Cunningham showed up and determined that there were in fact very ancient cities in the area. The locals promptly began robbing the site for bricks, and it wasn't until the 1920s that British and American archaeologists uncovered the Indus cities. So to say that this history was not abandoned and forgotten by the inhabitants is plainly incorrect. Given the way they treated the sites that Cunningham unearthed, it was not just forgotten, it was also unimportant.

I'm not saying there's a united India. I'm saying there's not even a united Pakistan before the modern era, there's not even a Pakistan, and the civilizations that come before the British weren't paying any attention to whether they were Pakistani or Indian because those things didn't exist yet. They didn't even realize the border was there, and moved back and forth across it just as people today are probably moving back and forth across the borders of nations that don't exist yet. Maybe the border of the future Empire of Gobbledygook is running right down the street in front of your house: are you now only going to associate with people on your side of the street? Will you only buy your next house if it is on that side of that street? No, obviously not. 

Plus, if you think about, there are many differences within Pakistan itself aren't there? You want to extend the heritage of Indus to the borders of Pakistan and then stop it there. This is clearly a modern and political concept. The scope of the heritage can either be local (ie the actual vicinity of the Indus sites, not all of Pakistan) or it can be regional (in which case it doesn't stop where the border is). 

Dividing things into "India" and "Pakistan" is clearly arbitrary and anachronistic. Very, very bad history. But good fodder for modern identity politics.

I'm not worried about what ifs here, I'm talking about what came before. What really was, not what might have been. I don't care about the "what ifs" and its not a what if scenario to say that before the Muslims invaded, there was no clear division between what we today call Indians and Pakistanis - there were plenty of groups straddling the border. 

Identity politics is all modern BS. Period. And it's all the same: every kind of identity politics rightfully points out that it's competitors are BS, but refuses to subject itself to the same kind of analysis. In other words, not only is it all the sort of thing that should only emanate from flatulent bovines, it is also hypocritical in the extreme. 

Well, here's the thing: I don't have any agenda but historical accuracy. I'm not interested in the politics of the area one bit. I'm not the one with the sig line that proclaims an agenda. I'm giving you the opinion of someone who's utterly neutral between the modern politics of India and Pakistan, all I care about is history: and I'm saying that trying to attach the Indus civilization with a modern nation-state (whether it's India or Pakistan) is anachronistic, terribly bad history and quite obviously has everything to do with modern identity politics and xenophobic nationalism. Plus, of course, whether they are ancestors of yours or not, their achievements don't belong to you or your nation. That's just vicarious pride, which is a sign your own achievements must be lacking.

Parts of Iran do, in fact, lie within the borders of the subcontinent.

Let's go back a little in the discussion, shall we?

Marco Polo - "I have heard that trade did exist between Ancient Pakistan (IVC) and the Ancient Egypt"

Marco Polo - "do you mean of trans-indus(i.e. ancient Pakistan) extraction or from gangetic india?"

Amar420 - "Let's just call it Indus instead of Pakistan"

MarcoPolo - "Indus is Pakistan just as Nile is Egypt"

Raja Ali - " they want to erase from their past history name india ,indic,indus."

Edgewaters - "I'm inclined to agree that Indus is, well, INDus - though it has absolutely nothing to do with the modern political entities called India and Pakistan."

So ... I defended the usual term, IVC, at the same time specifically noting that it had nothing to do with the modern nation of India (just in case Raja Ali is an Indian nationalist and figured I was backing a connection with the modern nation of India, which I am not). My basic agreement is only that IVC is the correct name and there's no need for Pakistani nationalists to try to suppress any word that has the letters "ind" in it. It has nothing to do with modern India and anyone trying to make that connection is no less absurd than those who seem to want to change the name to "ancient Pakistan".

I am fine with IVC, the usual term. I'm not the one trying to change that name here, to reflect an agenda stated in your sig line. I just don't like "ancient Pakistan" because it is ridiculous. IVC wasn't confined to Pakistan, bears no political relation to Pakistan, and Pakistan is not a geographic term. Just as I would not call Mississaugan Indians "Ancient Canadians", I have the same objection here to "Ancient Pakistan". For the same reasons, I would not agree that Pakistan is the cultural heir of the IVC any more than Canada is the cultural heir of the Mississaugans.

Think of it like this: the precolumbian Mississaugan native tribes were in Canada. We don't call them "Ancient Canadians", because Canada is a nation-state not a geographic term. Despite the fact that no historical Mississaugans lived in the USA, we do call them "Ancient Americans" because America is not just the name of the USA, it is also a geographic term for the continent - and it's the latter sense that's being used. 

In fact, the connection with the IVC for Pakistan is far more tenuous, as it is between a state created in the 50s (and involving a massive population transfer, at that) and a civilization that was born at the dawn of the agricultural age, in an area which has seen much change. No doubt the cultural impact - and probably biological impact, too - of such an ancient civilization has, by now, become quite dispersed and probably isn't even limited to the subcontinent any more. 

I hate this phenomena of modern-day nationalists trying to "own" ancient civilizations. It is just such an inaccurate perversion of history. Such ancient cultures are so far removed in time and space from any modern state, that it is fair to say that their legacy belongs to humanity as a whole, not some particular culture that today happens to occupy the same site.

Maybe so, but it is centered around the Indus, just as Mesopotamian (meso = between, potamos = river, between the rivers) centers around the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers even though elements of Mesopotamian civilization are spread much further than that. Indus speaks to the geographical centre and core area, just as Mesopotamia does.